Pantelis Mpoukalas

Pantelis Boukalas was born in 1957 in Lesini, Mesolongi, Aetolia-Acarnania. He graduated from the School of Dentistry at the University of Athens. Since 1989, he has been editing the book page every Tuesday for the newspaper "Kathimerini," where he also regularly publishes columns on social and political commentary. He works as a proofreader and editor for publications. Since 1980, he has published several poetry books with Agra Publications, including "Algorythmos," "Eudokia's Excursion," "The Inner Panther," "Lygra Signals," "The Seer," "When the Plane Tree," and "Verbs." He has also authored volumes of essays and book reviews such as "Possibly: Stances in Greek and Foreign Literary Art," "Hypotheses," and "Hypotheses II," as well as studies on folk songs like "When the Verb Becomes a Noun: 'I Love' and the Vitality of the Poetic Language of Folk Songs" (2016) and "The Blood of Love: Desire and Murder in Folk Poetry" (2017). He has translated works for the same publishing house, including the Hellenistic "Epitaph of Adonis by Bion of Smyrna," the poems in the volume "Funeral Oration: Ancient Greek Epitaph Inscriptions," and the "Sympotic Epigrams" from the eleventh book of the Palatine Anthology. In 2010, he was awarded the State Prize for Poetry for his poetry collection "Verbs," and in 2017 (2018), he received the State Prize for Essay-Criticism for the essay "When the Verb Becomes a Noun: 'I Love' and the Vitality of the Poetic Language of Folk Songs." In 2024, he was honored with the Grand Prize for Letters for his overall contribution to literature.